Couple of weeks ago I purchased brand new Einstein strobe. I won’t go into much of technical specs but there are couple of points in this flash unit that should appeal to many photographers.
- 9 stops power range from 2.5Ws to 640Ws. This range gives you ability to overpower the mid-day sun on one hand, and use your lens wide open with very little light leaked from the strobe when needed.
- Color and Action modes allow to switch between consistent color temperature across whole power range and high speed flashing for sports and other fast moving subjects. Information display shows current light temperature in Kelvins in both modes, though I mostly mostly use mixed light sources so final temperature would rarely be equal to the one indicated.
Einstein unit is equipped with receptacle for optional Cybersync CSXCV transceiver which costs “whopping” $30 (compare that to Pocket Wizard!). This transceiver draws power from the strobe itself so you don’t need to worry about batteries. Form factor is quite strange with all those pins sticking out open. It is fragile design but it is probably the simplest form they could think of with pins going straight into circuit board. While in studio this form factor is not an issue, but taking it to location and assembling / disassembling the thing might cost you a pin or two.
Now, on the negative side Einstein strobe has very weak accessory grip. When you put large softbox or beauty dish onto it you can see that attachment gets crooked vertically, and you need to use it with caution until we’ll get some kind of fix from Paul C. Buff.
Considering all of that I took tiny 16×24 softbox with me for this fashion photoshoot on location. We got lucky and it was first nice weekend in Toronto after long winter. After doing initial makeup and hair at the salon we drove to Guildwood Inn in Scarborough where I was notified by the worker that free ride for photoshoots will soon be over and they will require permit for everybody that wields “professional” gear. Certainly, Einstein with softbox attached to Vagabond II looks professional enough 
The day was a mix of clouds and sun, and I was shooting at 1/250sec. f/8-f/11 ISO200. Einstein was set mostly to -4f, Color mode. We did few tests with flowing fabric and all shots appeared quite sharp on camera LCD screen so I didn’t even bother to switch to Action.
As we had only two looks for this shoot I didn’t have to conserve battery life and Vagabond II was set to Fast recycle. Recycle time in this mode is minimal and I had to wait only for the model to switch position between shots.
The shoot went smoothly, strobe performed about 400 fires without a hitch (this is expected behaviour). I still need to test performance with faster moving subjects where I previously resorted to small and fast Nikon speedlites. I especially would be interested to try liquid action stopping.
Posted under
fashion photography,
gear review
